A Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain and ex-Aviation Minister, Osita Chidoka, says the Nigerian Constitution and other electoral laws should be amended to make any presidential candidate who doesn’t have over 50% of total votes cast in an election unfit for office.
Chidoka, an ally of PDP presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar and a member of the party’s Presidential Campaign Council for the February 25, 2023 election, revealed this on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday.
The former minister proposed runoff elections for presidential elections if no contender received more than 50% of the vote.
Chidoka said the votes gotten by President Bola Tinubu, then presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), put him in “serious minority” that makes it difficult for him to push “big agenda” like petrol subsidy removal and the unification of the foreign exchange windows.
He said, “Look at the reactions of Nigerians to the war in Niger. If you look at the reaction of fuel subsidy. If the people of Nigeria have confidence that this government has mass legitimacy, which brings me to a point, I think we need to amend our laws to make it that any presidential candidate who doesn’t make 50 plus 1 of the votes cast in an election should go for a runoff because election of a President as 33% of the votes keeps the President in serious minority that makes him difficult to push big agenda.”
The PDP stalwart expressed support for petrol subsidy removal and the floating of the naira but said the policies must be made in such a way that there won’t be “serious negative externalities” such as soaring food prices and transportation cost.
The ex-minister also said the President should have waited, constituted his cabinet, and consult with them before taking the two major decisions he took.
He, however, said the current 45 minister designates of the President don’t inspire confidence.
“If he (Tinubu) had had a cabinet. Sadly, the cabinet I see today does not inspire confidence. I don’t even know whether this cabinet will be able to advise him better than the decisions he had taken,” he said.
In the February poll, Tinubu came out tops in 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states, and secured significant numbers in several other states to claim the highest number of votes — 8,794,726 out of the 24,025,940 total votes cast in the poll.
Atiku, who has now run for president six times, got 6,984,520 votes, while the candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, who, in less than a year, galvanised young voters in a manner some have described as unprecedented finished the race with 6,101,533.
Also, a former Kano State Governor and candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Rabiu Kwankwaso, finished fourth, claiming victory in his state — Kano. He secured 1,496,687 votes.
According to Section 134 of the Nigerian Constitution, a presidential candidate can only be announced as the winner if he or she has the majority of votes cast at the election; and has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
Sub section 3 of the same section states explicitly that “in default of a candidate duly elected in accordance with subsection (2) of this section their shall be a second election”.